


Hija mía

by Isis



Category: Sharpe - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-25
Updated: 2007-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-01 14:14:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The letter has been unfolded and refolded many times. It is all Antonia knows of her mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hija mía

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Yuletide 2007.

The girl runs through the square. They are following behind her, jeering: two boys and three girls. The boys have dirty faces; they are oafs who will do nothing more in their lives than plow and plant, both in the fields and in their women. The girls hang back a few steps behind the boys, content to let them lead.

They call her a half-breed and an orphan, thinking they are being insulting. They do not know the pride she takes in these words. They are badges of honour. 

She runs around a corner, into an alley, and they whoop, thinking they have her cornered. Her knees buckle, she bends, her hair falls across her face. One of the girls laughs and says, "Look, she is crying, poor little orphan, poor little puppy."

"My dog is prettier than her," says one of the boys.

And then Antonia straightens, and she is not crying, she was never crying. She only bent to scoop stones from the ground. She throws fast and hard and true, and the first stone catches the biggest boy on the upper arm, sending him staggering.

"Bitch," he snarls. "Stupid bitch, you think you can fight?"

In answer she hurls a second stone at him, and then a third at the other boy, and as they clutch their arms and stumble after her she laughs and runs and slips away from them, fast as a deer.

* * *

She enters the house quietly, but Tía Adalia hears her and asks about her day at school. "It was fine," Antonia says. Tía Adalia is not really her aunt, exactly, although she is related to Antonia in some complex way. She is a good woman.

Antonia goes to her room. She does not have to share it any more, now that Lucita is married. It is small and neat, the whitewashed walls gleaming in the late-day sun that sneaks in through the window. 

Her Bible sits on the small wooden desk. From it she takes a piece of paper; it has been unfolded and refolded many times, and the creases are sharp and beginning to tear. The paper is yellowed and dirty in places. She sits on her bed and carefully unfolds it.

It is a letter, written in a strong, clear hand. She can't remember not having it; she can't remember exactly when Tía Adalia first gave it to her. It was so long ago that she had not yet learned to read, so Tía Adalia read it aloud to her. Now that she is older she can read it for herself, of course, and she reads it often, over and over. Even though she knows every word by heart. 

_Hija mía_ , it begins. My daughter.

* * *

My daughter, I am writing this as I look at you, asleep in your cradle. You are so beautiful and so fierce. You are like me, and you are like your father.

You will meet him soon, I hope. Wellington's army is not far from Badajoz now. They will storm the city and defeat the French, and you will meet your father for the first time. He will love you, I know, and you will love him.

I pray that we will soon defeat Napoléon and drive the French from our country. In my dreams we live together in a cottage. We live as we did before this war began. I teach you to ride. Your father teaches you to shoot rabbits. We will have orange groves, perhaps, or olives. Maybe you will have a younger sister, or a brother.

I do not want to teach you how to slit a man's throat, but if I must, I will. I do not want you to grow into your womanhood without knowing your father or your mother; but your father is a soldier, and your mother is a soldier, and we are at war.

Your father is Captain Richard Sharpe, and he is an Englishman. Not a nobleman, but a noble man. The men love him. The other officers do not, because he is twice the man that any of them are. He is strong and brave and handsome, and he knows what is honour and what is justice. With his rifle he can shoot out the eye of an eagle at two hundred paces. I am proud to fight at his side, and he is proud to fight at mine. 

In two days, maybe in three, the English army will be at the walls of Badajoz. The city will be under siege. I believe it will fall—I pray that it will fall—but Wellington has tried to take the city from the French before, and failed. In two days, maybe in three, you will meet your father—or you will never meet him. But you will read this letter, and you will know what manner of man he was, and you will know what it is to be his daughter.

His daughter, and mine. I am Teresa Moreno, and they call me The Needle. It is a name I embrace. I have ridden for days through the mountains to bring men the weapons and information they need; I have led the partisans into battle, and I have killed more men than I wish to count. I fight for my country. It is not what I would have chosen to do, maybe, but it is what I must do.

And perhaps it will happen that the French will kill me, as they killed my mother. We are at war; it is always a risk. So I will tell you this: the happiest moment of my life was when the midwife laid you in my arms for the first time. I am proud to be a soldier, but I am prouder yet to be your mother. When Spain is free and The Needle is forgotten, I will still be Teresa Moreno, mother of Antonia.

* * *

The signature loops beautifully across the page. Antonia stares at it for a long while before folding the paper again and slipping it into its place in the Bible.

The letter is her most prized and most secret possession. It is all she knows of her mother, whom she does not remember at all. Tía Adalia has described her as a tall, graceful lady with long brown hair and a quick smile, and Antonia tries to imagine her, but all she sees before her eyes is the looping script of her handwriting. That, and the faded wooden cross on her grave.

She wonders what has become of her father. Badajoz fell to the British, and so he must have come to them after her mother wrote the letter. He must have seen her, even if only once. He must know he has a daughter. 

The war ended when Antonia was four. If Captain Sharpe still lived, surely he would have come for her then, she thinks.

Tía Adalia shrugs and looks away when Antonia asks.

Napoléon died last year. They got the news from a cousin of a friend. Antonia is nearly eleven, and she's a good rider. She is strong and she is clever, and she is not going to stay in the village and marry some village boy like Lucita did.

She speaks French well, and she is learning English. One day she will ride to the coast and find a boat to take her to England. She will find Sharpe, if he still lives.

She will show him that she is her mother's daughter. And that she is his.


End file.
